OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a letter about Thomas Gummersall Anderson being removed from the Orillia Hall of Fame, published April 9.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Ward’s assessment of this move by Orillia city council to bowdlerize the history of our area.
After moving to Orillia and exploring the area, I was introduced to the remarkable story of Thomas Gummersall Anderson during a visit to the Coldwater Mill museum and restaurant. I thought Anderson’s story was extraordinary: The man was well ahead of his time, and his commitment to public service and to the communities we was working with to achieve harmony between the objectives he had been given and the best result for the people he was charged with looking after was something that the original Orillia commemoration was right to celebrate.
Fifty-eight years of devoted service, “devoted to their interests and was highly regarded by them.” Would that any of us earn such an epitaph.
Iain Grant
Orillia
